Animating society: a little imagination makes room for urban wildlife and retired livestock

A dog and a deer filled the local press this week -- they were acting like a couple of animals.

So: that's that news. It started another spate of quotes from politicians darkly muttering about a deer "cull" because "people" have asked for one -- yet the people who have done so amount to a tiny percentage of those living in the CRD.

It is time to think outside the box on this, or maybe to think like the British do in the New Forest. There they have 200 square miles set aside for wild ponies, who munch and crunch their way around the houses and roads that also criss-cross the 200 acres of woods, pasture and villages. The people co-exist with the animals, and the tourists and campers are drawn to them as a feature. Ten "verderers" with a staff of "agisters" monitor the animals and the landscape, and it is hard to see why we could not do the same with our deer, rabbit, squirrel and raccoon populations in the CRD. They even include free range pigs in the New Forest, who are allotted time every fall for "pannaging" - foraging for acorns which are not good for the wild ponies (and which are only slightly used up by the squirrels and blue jays).

What is required is that some land is left for trees and grassland in the first place. We could secure that for our deer, and verderers to guide them into the right areas. The benefit is for humanity as well: deer or no deer we also need nature in our surroundings, for mental health, outdoor exercise space, aesthetic pleasure, and for the carbon-sinking, shading effects of treescapes. Trees and woodland creatures go together, and a city is only enhanced by leaving generous space for both. It's being done elsewhere - this is not an impossible dream.

Since people are willing to erect high fences to keep deer out of their gardens, maybe others are willing to use fencing to keep them in (augmenting the park space we should assign for them). Adopt a deer family? Better than being complicit in the suffering accompanying their slaughter by traps and lethal bolts. And when it comes to adopting, why stop at deer?

As of January 1, 2012, England has gone battery cage-free in the poultry business, and the British Hen Welfare Trust re-homes retired laying hens, who would normally be slaughtered while still young. We too need to house retired farm animals (have we not just seen the atrocious situation of the old gelding starved for a year and then hanged on a farm in Saanich?); could we not be a little more imaginative in our space-sharing with the animals around us?

In the same way we have a garbage dump and a common water source, a municipality should have a retired-working-animal facility, as a normal part of being civilized. Politicians are led by the people by whom they want to be re-elected, so it is up to us to come up with the solutions to both animal issues and the problem of dwindling greenspace.